At first sight, the work of Kate Ballis may not look like they're photographs, but they are. And her latest exhibition entitled, Hypercolour Fantasy: Infra Realism now showing at Los Angeles gallery, Garis & Hahn conjures up so many references.

'Sheats Goldstein', 2017Archival pigment print

Kate Ballis

The photographs seem to be an amalgamation of Warhol’s 1966 Cow, Stepford wives, Bowie’s "Life on Mars" and all-American pink gumball sweets.

Inspired by Richard Mosse's groundbreaking infrared documentary series, Ballis' Infra Realism series features 13 large-scale hyper-saturated and seductive photographs that look at Californian archetypes from modernist architecture to vintage cars through a rose-tinted lens, quite literally. At the intersection of science and magic are her technicolor landscapes-meet-dreamscapes.

"I want viewers to feel like they are glimpsing into a parallel universe which is at once strange but also familiar. And then I want them to go out into their neighborhoods and look twice at otherwise banal scenes and see some magic in there and contemplate what other spectrums of energy are out there that cannot be seen by the human eye!" Kate Ballis

'Peekaboo', 2017Archival pigment print

Kate Ballis

Shot with a specially converted full-spectrum mirrorless camera using various infrared filters, Ballis reimagined iconic Palm Springs locations, such as the Ace Hotel & Swim Club, the Palm Springs Tennis Club and the Parker Hotel, as a surreal world in which palm trees are depicted in vibrant hues of blue, skies are a shade of millennial pink on acid, and swimming pools are blood red. The contrasting, high-octane colors illuminate the textures of the lush foliage that once blended into the desert landscape. The images are subversive, and there's an unsettling ambiguity with the too good to be true sugar coated realism.

'ACE', 2017Archival pigment print

Kate Ballis

Why Palm Springs?I was first drawn to Palm Springs after seeing Slim Aarons photos of the jetset crew enjoying cocktails by the pool with the arid mountains high in the background. My first trip to Palm Springs was in 2013 and it was love at first sight. The mid century houses transported me to another time, and the slight haze in front of the mountainous backdrop gave a surreal setting like a hollywood set.

Tell us about the technicals of the camera you used for this...The series re-imagines iconic Californian locations as a surreal world by using a specially converted full-spectrum mirrorless camera with infrared filters. Then in post production I subvert a technique commonly used to make infrared photos appear realistic. The infrared filters I use are ordinarily used in farming to test crop health. The infrared spectrum of light emanating from plants sits just beyond the light spectrum visible to the naked eye, and so in taking these photographs, I have been able to focus on and highlight the hidden things in nature that we, as humans, are not equipped to see, those that lie just outside of our physical perceptions. In my series, infrared photography is used to illuminate how alive the otherwise muted landscapes are, while also outing synthetic plants and struggling succulents.

Sum up your aesthetic?Other-worldly, poppy, and sits within the mysterious realm somewhere between the surreal and real, hence the title, Infra Realism.

I love storytelling, so I always try to find the best way to evoke a feeling of a place. I wanted to convey the feeling of an 80s fantasy-land - Barbie driving around a movie set in her corvette, and then visiting Liberace's house with a cocktail in hand. I also wanted to bring an otherwise arid and neutral-toned desert to life! Desert residences often paint their houses muted desert tones to blend into the arid landscapes, and the succulents look like they are struggling to survive, but the infrared photos show that they are in fact thriving, even in the peak of summer, with temperatures rising over 120F.

'Sands', 2017Archival pigment print

Kate Ballis

Tell us about the color palette of Palm Springs...Palm Springs, although being filled with colorful people and interiors, is extremely desert-toned on its facade. The home-owners have worked so hard to keep house paints and landscaping subtle. An occasional bright colored door or house pops out, but aside from that, the streets are very muted. Since my last trip to Palm Springs in November last year, I have spent so much time with the images, editing, and then proofing my show and book, that I think I let myself remember the city as being colorful. It’s strangely been a bit of an anticlimax driving around this trip (July), and remembering how devoid of color (although beautifully serene) the streets are, especially in summer.

How has your aesthetic got to where it is? I’ve always been drawn to otherworldly landscapes, especially deserts and glaciers…anything that looks like it could be on the moon or Mars, as we’ve been told in pop culture. But I think as often these landscapes have actually been used as movie sets for films about these planets, they start to make these planets seem familiar. As my art series have evolved, I have wanted to make these locations feel like they are from a planet we have not yet explored or comprehended. In my series “Glace Noir” I used the old Hollywood day for night technique to make Patagonian glacier’s seem completely foreign. In Infra Realism I have turned these deserts into somewhere that feel like they’re in a parallel universe - very similar but something odd, and even more fantastical. However, I do like to sometimes capture these places realistically to jog my memory and also to encourage other people to travel to these incredible places around the world.

Another theme I’ve been exploring through my work is making the unseen, seen. I’m really interested in energy and how we can feel it, but it’s not so easy to see. I love the fact that there are spectrums of light, such as infrared that cannot be seen by the human eye, but the process of photography can make them visible. To me it’s the border of science and magic. The vibrations of the opposing colours I have chosen attempt to imitate the vibration of light and energy.

Kate is set to bring out a book
Infra Realism via and Australian publisher, Manuscript in November 2018.